[miggol]

I've only used modern immutable Linux (Alpine, MicroOS) and wondered why of all places `/var/` was chosen as the location for rw stuff. It's fun to be reminded that there was of course a time when an immutable OS was the default, and you ran it off of floppies. So there's a lot of history to using `/var/` for that. Guess we've come full circle!

[rendaw]

Was it immutable? I thought it was just different storage types, like you'd have a smaller disk for the root stuff and then make var on a larger disk. I'm surprised that, having something immutable, you'd choose to go the other direction.

[miggol]

Good point, considering the nature of floppies I suppose it technically mustn't have been immutable. But I feel like it would have been wise to mount your OS root read-only to prevent yourself from accidentally ruining your (possibly only) copy of your OS. At least before you had a reasonably sized hard drive.

> I'm surprised that, having something immutable, you'd choose to go the other direction.

I can somewhat imagine that having been limited by space and having to swap out disks all the time one would jump on the train of mutability without fully appreciating the benefits of immutability.